Hot Package (A Hostile Operations Team Novella)(#3) Read online

  HOT PACKAGE:

  A Hostile Operations Team Christmas Novella

  By

  Lynn Raye Harris

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  When public relations expert Olivia Reese stumbles onto evidence of a dangerous conspiracy right before Christmas, there’s only one man she can call for help. Billy “The Kid” Blake is a member of an elite military unit—the Hostile Operations Team—and he’s Olivia’s former lover.

  Billy never forgot the sexy woman who rocked his world—and his bed—before she walked out on him. Now that she needs his help, he’ll do anything he can to keep her safe. But as time runs out and the snow piles up, can Billy and Olivia work together to thwart a lethal plot against the Pentagon without getting involved again?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Two days before Christmas…

  Olivia Reese was in trouble. Big trouble. And it had nothing to do with the fact it was nearly Christmas and she was spending it all alone. Unlike last year, when she’d been wrapped up in Billy “The Kid” Blake’s arms. That was the first Christmas in a long time where she’d been happy and filled with thoughts of the future.

  She pushed away memories of slick skin, hard muscles, and utter bliss, and pulled in a deep breath. Then she scrolled through the documents on her computer one more time. She’d been working for Titan Technology for the last few months, in their PR department, and she’d bought the company spiel—hook, line, and sinker. She’d seen the test results for their revolutionary weapons guidance system, and she’d put together the package to convince Congress why Titan should supply the next generation of targeting systems to the Army.

  Her eyes blurred as she reread the results she was seeing onscreen—the real results. Everything she’d been told was a lie. Everything she’d believed and everything she’d worked to sell. She’d thought she was helping to protect men like Billy, warfighters who put their lives on the line for this country every day.

  A chill went through her then, because if this sale went through, she’d be helping to dig their graves instead.

  Olivia put her hand to her mouth and sat there with her heart in her throat, imagining Billy fighting in some war-torn country, depending on this equipment to save his life. And when it failed…

  A noise in the outer office forced Olivia’s head up. It was late and dark in the company’s offices in Arlington, Virginia, but she’d stayed behind to catch up on some work after the Christmas party earlier that day. Tom Howard, the company president, had informed everyone they were to take the next week off in celebration of their certain victory when Congress reconvened in January.

  They had the votes, according to him, and the deal was sewn up. The project was a success and everyone had been jubilant. There’d been champagne and much laughter. Olivia had joined in the fun, though she’d thought it was inviting bad luck even though Titan had outpaced all their competitors. Unless someone else invented a whole new system over the holidays, theirs was the best.

  Except that it wasn’t.

  Olivia began to shake as voices filtered through the empty office. On instinct, she ejected the CD and stuffed it in her purse. It had come from Alan Cooper, Titan’s head of development, and she still couldn’t figure out why he’d sent her such a thing. Unless he hadn’t meant to.

  But it had been in a holey joe envelope in her inbox, clearly marked for her.

  Olivia’s belly churned as she ducked down behind her desk. She told herself it was silly to hide when she had every right to be there, but some little voice in the back of her head insisted. Two shadows moved past her office. She could see them flaring on her wall through the windows. She’d shut her office door, so unless they’d seen the light from her screen before she’d put the computer to sleep, they would have no idea she was here.

  The time she’d spent with Billy hadn’t been long in the scheme of things, but she’d learned a thing or two from him. And one of those seemed to be a healthy paranoia about people’s motives and capabilities. She hunkered under her desk and waited for what seemed like hours. The office remained quiet and she finally came out, grabbed her purse and coat, and tiptoed to her door.

  Olivia opened it quietly and listened, though it was hard as hell to hear anything over the pounding of her heart. She hurried through the office, keyed herself out of the security locks, and stepped into the outer lobby of the building that housed Titan Technology’s offices. A security guard looked up from the desk and nodded at her.

  “Ma’am,” he said as she walked by. He called out again when she didn’t stop.

  Olivia spun around, her mind racing. “Yes?”

  He pushed the book on the counter toward her. “You forgot to sign out, ma’am.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.” Olivia marched over to the counter and signed her name on the appropriate line with trembling fingers. The guard checked the entry against her badge and then nodded.

  Olivia hurried through the frosty parking lot. She got into her car, locked the doors, and glanced up at the windows to Titan’s offices. Someone stood in the window, and she shuddered uncontrollably. It might be nothing. Probably was nothing. But if anyone wanted to know who had just left the building, all they had to do was check the logs.

  ***

  It was starting to snow. Billy Blake listened to the excited chatter of the waitresses as he sat at the bar and nursed a beer. Two days until Christmas and it looked as if DC might get a white one after all. It didn’t happen often, unlike back home. Billy thought of Sky Mountain, of his aunt and uncle’s log cabin decorated for the holiday with twinkling white lights and a giant tree in the front window. His cousins would gather there on Christmas Eve and the whole family would drink hot chocolate, eat Aunt June’s famous crispy goose, and sing carols around the piano until midnight when they would each open one present.

  Then they would go to bed and arise much too early when one of Billy’s nephews or nieces couldn’t wait another minute to see what Santa had brought. Aunt June would fix French toast and coffee and the fun would begin again.

  Billy wished like hell he could be there. But the Hostile Operations Team had an important mission coming up and there was no time to go home for the holiday. There hadn’t been time for the past four years. Aunt June tried to hide her disappointment whenever she called to ask each year, but Billy knew. Aunt June was his mother’s sister and she’d always treated him like her own. From five years of age, he had been. She and Uncle Jerry raised him when his mother dropped him off one day and never came back. He loved them both and missed them most of all at this time of year.

  Billy shoved the beer away and tossed some bills on the bar. He’d thought he might like sitting in a noisy bar rather than in the quiet of his home where he could think about his family—or, worse, about the way he’d spent last Christmas lost in the delectable body of Olivia Reese—but he’d been wrong. He stood and shrugged into his jacket and walked outside. The snow was fat and soft and it was accumulating fast on the grass and the rounded lumps of vehicles. It was melting on the pavement for the moment, but that wouldn’t last when the temperature dropped after midnight. If the Department of Transportation wasn’t out with the salt trucks, this would be a helluva mess in the morning.

  Billy wasn’t afraid of a little snow driving. Growing up in Vermont, you learned real quick. But no one could drive on ice. It was best to stay home and wait for the thaw, or risk getting plowed over by some idiot who thought a four-wheel drive meant he could go where he wanted no matter the weather.

  Billy dusted snow off the windshield of his Tahoe and climbed behind the wheel. It wasn’t a long drive to the little hous
e he’d rented but he was glad for the beast of a truck that would get him down the tiny lane. It still amazed him that you could be right here in the midst of a sprawling suburbia that stretched between DC and Baltimore, and yet still manage to turn down a road and find yourself in the country.

  He liked that. He swung the Tahoe onto his road and flipped on the fog lights so he could see through the swirling snow. He’d gone about a mile when his headlights flashed on the shiny form of a car sitting sideways in the ditch. They’d taken the curve too fast, no doubt, and slid into the ditch before they could correct course.

  Billy sighed and brought the Tahoe to a stop, grabbing a flashlight from the glove compartment before getting out and walking over to the car—a BMW 328i that still looked pretty new. There was no one in it so he went back to the truck and started down the road again. His headlights illuminated the dark form of someone walking up ahead. Hands shoved in pockets, hood up, head down, the person could have been a man or a woman if not for the skirt that ended a couple of inches above the back of the knee.

  The woman wasn’t doing a good job of walking, no doubt because she was wearing a pair of high heels. When she realized he was behind her, she tried to move faster. And then she stumbled off the road and down into a wide field that led nowhere. Billy shoved the truck into park and got out. The woman was trying to slide into the treeline at one side of the field.

  “Hey,” he called out. “You need some help?”

  It was a stupid question, but he figured she was scared and didn’t need him chasing after her. She stopped and turned and he spoke again as snow dissolved against his face and chilled his skin.

  “Can I give you a ride somewhere, ma’am? Or you can use my phone to call for help if you prefer.”

  She began to move toward him then and he breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t really wanted to chase some strange woman into the trees, but he couldn’t in all conscience have left her out here to freeze.

  She had trouble moving up the slope and he went over to give her a hand. It was pretty dark, but her pale coat stood out like a beacon in the reflected light from the Tahoe. He gripped the flashlight in one fist but resisted the urge to shine it on her.

  She grasped his hand with gloved fingers and he tugged her up the slope until she was on a level with him. She was shorter than he was—no surprise since he didn’t encounter many women who were six-two—and small-boned. He looked down at her feet, wondering how on earth she’d managed to run toward the woods in those heels, and realized she’d lost the shoes. She was standing barefoot in the snow on a freezing Maryland road and that sound he heard was her teeth chattering.

  Billy swore. On instinct, he swept her up into his arms as if she weighed next to nothing. She gasped and he opened his mouth to apologize for surprising her and to reassure her that he wouldn’t hurt her.

  But then she laughed and he stilled as that sound dove down beneath his skin and curled around his soul. He knew that laugh. Her hood had fallen back now and he peered down into a face he’d never thought he would see again. She’d ripped his guts out when she’d left. Not that he would ever let her know it.

  “Olivia?” His voice was cold and distant. And filled with shock.

  “Hey, B-billy,” she said between chatters. “I w-was just c-coming to s-see you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “You should have called first.” Billy stood next to a fireplace, poking the fire up higher, his face in profile to her as he worked. Olivia sat on his couch, wrapped in a blanket, a mug of hot coffee in her hands as she tried to thaw out.

  “I didn’t think you’d answer,” she said softly. “Or maybe I thought you’d changed your number.” Her teeth chattered on the last word, but she wasn’t certain now whether it was adrenaline or cold. Probably both.

  But she knew he hadn’t changed his number. These days, with unlimited nationwide calling on cell phones, why would someone like him change a number when he was just as likely to move again in the near future?

  Billy turned and sank down on a chair across from her—as far away as he could get, she supposed, without leaving his own house—and glared. Her heart turned over and she asked herself again why she’d come. Why she’d thought for one minute he could help her. This problem was bigger than he was. Way bigger. But she had nowhere else to turn.

  She needed Billy’s advice. But first she had to get through the pain of seeing him again, the sizzling attraction even now fizzing in her veins, and think about what had happened tonight.

  “How did you find me?”

  She didn’t like admitting this part, but there was no getting around it. “A favor from a friend.”

  “A favor from a friend.” He said it darkly and she swallowed. Special operators typically flew under the radar. Their real lives weren’t necessarily cloaked in secrecy, but the HOT guys didn’t exist in the real Army. If you wanted to find them, you had to know someone. And if he thought about it he’d know she could have only talked to a handful of people.

  It had been sheer accident that she’d run across Matt Girard and Kevin MacDonald in the Pentagon one day a couple of months ago, but Matt had told her where Billy was living. He’d probably thought she might go see Billy, but she hadn’t been able to do it. She’d held onto the knowledge of where he was like an old blanket she couldn’t part with. She knew that all she had to do was find the courage to pick up the phone, or make a drive out to Maryland.

  Of course she never had.

  Billy scraped a hand through his dark hair and swore softly. “Never thought to see you again, Livvie. You made it pretty clear that was your wish.”

  He was the only man in the world who could call her Livvie and get away with it. The sound stroked down her skin like a caress, made her remember things she’d rather not.

  “That wasn’t my wish at all.”

  She’d been scared. And maybe a bit stupid. Not that she was telling him that, but she’d thought it often enough over the past few months. She’d rashly given him an ultimatum and all he’d said was that they needed to talk when he returned from the mission he’d been going on. He hadn’t said he loved her and she knew he wouldn’t choose her over HOT.

  She hadn’t said those words either, but she’d certainly felt them. She hadn’t wanted to be the first to open her heart, but in that moment when he’d looked at her coolly and told her they would talk, she’d known what was coming. And since she knew what it was like to doggedly hang on to a man who didn’t love you, she’d known what she had to do. She’d vowed long ago she would never beg a man for his heart.

  Her flighty mother was still looking for love, still choosing the wrong man and hanging on tight until he dumped her and went for someone younger and prettier and less neurotic.

  Olivia’s insides twisted tight. Yes, she’d walked out on him. But he hadn’t come looking for her either. He’d returned from his mission and she’d been gone. She’d taken the job with Titan and moved to DC. He’d never called her.

  Billy’s dark eyes bored into her and she knew he wasn’t about to open up the Pandora’s Box of emotion that lay between them ever again. So far as he was concerned, it was another mission; over and done and move on to the next one.

  “You didn’t come here to discuss the past. What gives?”

  Olivia gulped down the acid rising in her throat. It had seemed like a good idea to seek him out, but now she wasn’t so sure. What if he told her to get out once she spilled her story? “I need your help, Billy.”

  His hot stare didn’t waver. “My help.”

  She pulled the blanket tighter and swallowed. After she’d left the office, she’d been planning to go straight home and shut herself away for the night. Tomorrow, everything would make more sense. But as she’d pulled into the parking garage of her building, she’d felt the hair on the back of her neck start to crawl. It was probably nothing, but no way was she getting out of her car and walking over to the elevator knowing what she had in her purse.

  “S
omeone sent me something and I’m not sure what to make of it.”

  He didn’t say anything and she tumbled on nervously. “There were these files I shouldn’t have seen.”

  Now his eyes gleamed with interest. If there was anything that lit Billy up like a Christmas tree, it was computers. And sex.

  Jesus. Olivia closed her eyes and tried to shove away the image of a very naked and very hard Billy Blake hovering over her in that last thick moment before he plunged into her and rocked her world like no other man ever had before or since. Just last year, they’d been tangled together on the couch in front of the Christmas tree, nothing but the colored lights illuminating their skin as they made love. She hadn’t put up a tree this year because she hadn’t wanted to remember. Billy had the small tabletop tree from his aunt, she noticed, but it wasn’t plugged in.

  Though it probably had everything to do with her arriving unannounced and nothing to do with painful memories.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “I work for Titan Technology now,” she said, spilling the details of her job over the past few months. “We’re about to get approval on a weapons guidance system for the Army.”

  Billy nodded. “Mendez has mentioned Titan. It’s real revolutionary, what they’re doing. It’ll help a lot of our soldiers.”

  Olivia was sweating now. She pushed the blanket away and sucked in a breath as tears pressed the backs of her eyes. Dammit, she wasn’t going to cry. She never cried. Not even when she’d told Billy to choose her or HOT and he’d chosen HOT. She’d watched him pack up his duffel, stared dry-eyed as he swung it over his shoulder and shot her a dark look.

  “We’ll talk when I get back.”

  But she’d known he’d made his choice. He’d walked out and she’d still not cried. She’d shook. She’d poured a shot of tequila. She’d watched a sappy movie on television and passed out after one too many shots. But she’d never cried.

  “That’s the thing,” she said now, looking into the eyes of the only man she’d ever loved. “If what I saw is real, it won’t help anyone. It’s a lie, Billy. Nothing but a lie.”